How to publish a successful ebook?

I have been writing technical articles since 2004, but never really thought about monetizing my work until late last year. I own more than a dozen websites, and it really becomes hard to maintain all of them. In the 4th Quarter of 2010, I started selling advertisements on Web Hosting Resources, and Geolocation websites and started generating a passive income from them monthly. Due to the time it takes to find quality advertisers, and running and maintaining an Ad server is somewhat troublesome I have decided to convert all of my Ads to Google Adsense. I have been running Google Adsense for nearly 8 months, and I am pretty happy with its performance as compared to other advertisement networks such as Adbrite and 3rd party networks.

Up until this year, I have been focusing on writing technical content such as PHP, MySQL, Linux, and Java-related topics. Beginning in 2013, I am going to shift a gear and write about personal development topics as well as topics relating to increasing website traffic and making money online. I have been contemplating writing an ebook since 2009, and have written a series of articles in which I intend to create an ebook but never completed my goal. In the 1Q of 2013, I am going to publish an ebook for real and offer it to the web hosting community free of charge. My very first ebook will be about "A complete guide to starting a successful web hosting business" and my target release date is January 31, 2013. I am writing this article so that I have a written record of my goal and deadline for completing my very first ebook. Once completed, I will be spending the next two months promoting it on the Internet and sharing my experiences with you.

I have never written a book before, so I did some research on the Internet and found a few key things to note when writing an ebook.

1. Content is the king: The first and foremost thing to do when writing an ebook is to decide on the topic. You will want to write about a topic that you have deep knowledge, of and that there is a need and desire for others to learn about. If you can find a topic that has a large demand that would be even better than trying to satisfy a niche. If you build your audience, convince your readers with the material you're discussing, and make it worthwhile for them to return then you accomplished your goal of writing an ebook.
2. Know your audience: It doesn't really matter what you want to get out of your ebook. The matter of fact is knowing what your readers want from your ebook. Everyone has a busy life, and their time is a very valuable asset. If you are going to ask your website visitors to download an ebook and ask them to spend the time to read it then it's better be darn good. A website visitor has a reason for downloading and reading your ebook, and you are obligated to know your readers and provide the content that they want.
3. Eye Level Education: Every Korean knows "eye level education" advertised by one of the renowned private tutoring academies. It doesn't matter how much you know about the topic you are writing, but what matters is keeping your readers interested and writing a book that your audience can understand. Several years ago, I volunteered to teach senior citizens how to use the Internet to send emails, chat, and browse websites. At the end of the course, I did a survey and everyone thought my teaching was very difficult to understand. The reason was that I didn't teach the material at my audience's level, but made some false assumptions about the audience's current knowledge. The key is to write the contents your audience want in a format that they can easily understand.
4. A picture is worth a thousand words: I cannot stress enough that your readers are busy individuals. They don't have the time to read every word in the ebook, and they will surely skim through the topics that they are not interested in. Adding pictures, diagrams, or flowcharts to your ebook will make your book a lot easier to understand. If you are adding images to your ebook, make sure you're not violating the copyright of the material. You can purchase some of the photos and images from stock photo websites.
5. Hyperlinks: One of the benefits of publishing an ebook in PDF format is that you can include your website link on your ebook that your audience can click on. Be sure to include a backlink to your website and drive targeted traffic to your site. One word of caution is don't overdo it. Having excessive links on your ebook gives a bad impression to your readers.

How to monetize your ebook?

Many bloggers including myself write ebooks to publicize their work and hopefully make money from it. There are a number of ways you can make money from your ebook.

1. Use an ebook to drive traffic to your site, and earn passive income from selling advertisements.
2. Sell your ebook on Kindle Marketplace.
3. Sell your ebook on your website.